Police suspect "Islamist militants" behind the latest attack, weeks after several others were butchered with machetes.

Machete-wielding assailants hacked to death a village doctor and wounded a university teacher in western Bangladesh in what police suspect was the latest in a series of attacks by hardline groups in the country.

The attackers on Friday rode a motorcycle which they used to block another motorbike driven by their victims in the western district of Kushtia, 245km from Dhaka, local police chief Mohammad Sahabuddin Chowdhury said.

The homeopathic doctor, Mir Sanaur Rahman, 55, was killed on the spot and his companion, identified as Saifuzzaman, 45, suffered serious wounds. Police found a bloody machete at the scene.